Search

March 12, 2014

Wiring Up the Details for Emulation

For two-plus years, Herb Statham has been inquiring about the Stromasys CHARON HP 3000 emulator. He first stuck his hand up with curiosity before the software was even released. He's in an IT career stop as Project Manager for Cerro Wire LLC, a building wire industry supplier whose roots go back to 1920. Manufacturing headquartered in Hartselle, Alabama, with facilities in Utah, Indiana and Georgia.

Statham is checking out the licensing clearances he'll need to move the company's applications across to this Intel-powered solution. The privatization of Dell turns out to be a factor in his timetable. Dell purchased Quest Software before Dell took itself private. By the start of 2014, Dell was still reorganizing its operations, including license permissions needed for its Bridgeware and Netbase software. Cerro Wire uses both.

I’m after some answers about moving over to a virtual box" Statham says. "I know CHARON's emulating an A500, but that [Intel] box [that would host it] has four processors on it. I’ve heard what I’m going to have to pay, instead of hearing, 'Okay, you’re emulating an A500, with two processors.' They’re looking more at the physical side.”

This spring is a time of change and new growth for legacy software like Netbase, or widespread solutions such as PowerHouse. While the former's got some room to embrace license changes, the latter's also got new ownership. The PowerHouse owners Unicom Systems have been in touch with their customers over the last few months. The end of March will mark the projected wrap-up on Unicom's field research. At Cerro, the Quest software is really the only license that needs to be managed onto CHARON, according to Statham.

Cerro Wire's got an A500 now as a result of several decades of 3000 ownership. The company is fortunate enough to have control over its main applications, software based on the DeCarlo, Paternite, & Associates IBS/3000 suite. At the company HQ in Hartselle, Alabama, Statham said turning to the 3000 early meant source code was Cerro's to revamp and extend.

"We have highly customized it, and we’ve written applications around it," Statham says. "When we bought it, source code was part of it. Some of the programs that were written for it now do a lot more than they used to do. Some have been replaced altogether."

The company replicates its data from the Hartselle center to an identical A Series server, including a dedicated VA 7410 RAID array, in Indiana. Netbase was a replication groundbreaker for the 3000 from the late 1980s onward, so it's essential to keeping the MPE/iX applications serving Cerro.

Statham has no pressure from Cerro management to replace the applications that are successful at running the company. With ample spare parts, independent support and storage consulting, and his own source in hand, he needs only the green light from Dell to move forward. Specifics on pricing and performance are still in play from Stromasys, at least from his vantage point. A 1.5 version of CHARON HPA/3000 was announced late last year, promising increased performance. But meeting the speed needs of an A-Class would be no challenge for the CHARON lineup.

This veteran of 3000 deployment and management has little desire to send his company toward an application replacement that might end up with Cerro "spending millions of dollars." There are many years left for MPE/iX, and his company is an all-HP shop, with the exception of a couple of Dell monitors on Statham's desk. He can see a long future for the app the company has fine-tuned to its business.

The CALENDAR intrinsic roadblock is the only thing he can forecast by now. He's not sure how HP might react to an independent fix for that issue, a date challenge that's still 13 years away.

"If we could ever get this 2027 thing out of the way, you could run your applications indefinitely, so long as you’ve got someone to support them," he says. "My only concern is HP themselves, in the event that someone said they had a patch to the operating system — and so you didn’t have to worry about the year, because there was some type of workaround."

But Stromasys became an HP Worldwide Reseller Partner last year, so perhaps even that question could be resolved. What nobody can be sure of, at the moment, is if Dell might want CHARON to be hosted on its server hardware, now that it owns Netbase.

Comments

Wiring Up the Details for Emulation

For two-plus years, Herb Statham has been inquiring about the Stromasys CHARON HP 3000 emulator. He first stuck his hand up with curiosity before the software was even released. He's in an IT career stop as Project Manager for Cerro Wire LLC, a building wire industry supplier whose roots go back to 1920. Manufacturing headquartered in Hartselle, Alabama, with facilities in Utah, Indiana and Georgia.

Statham is checking out the licensing clearances he'll need to move the company's applications across to this Intel-powered solution. The privatization of Dell turns out to be a factor in his timetable. Dell purchased Quest Software before Dell took itself private. By the start of 2014, Dell was still reorganizing its operations, including license permissions needed for its Bridgeware and Netbase software. Cerro Wire uses both.

I’m after some answers about moving over to a virtual box" Statham says. "I know CHARON's emulating an A500, but that [Intel] box [that would host it] has four processors on it. I’ve heard what I’m going to have to pay, instead of hearing, 'Okay, you’re emulating an A500, with two processors.' They’re looking more at the physical side.”

This spring is a time of change and new growth for legacy software like Netbase, or widespread solutions such as PowerHouse. While the former's got some room to embrace license changes, the latter's also got new ownership. The PowerHouse owners Unicom Systems have been in touch with their customers over the last few months. The end of March will mark the projected wrap-up on Unicom's field research. At Cerro, the Quest software is really the only license that needs to be managed onto CHARON, according to Statham.